Thanksgiving and Fuji-Q Weekend!

Saturday the 26th was when we had decided to celebrate Thanksgiving, since actual Thanksgiving Day was just another work day.  I did some shopping at my old station to get some imitation meat since i knew of a store there that carried it.  I also tried my luck at finding some cranberries because my thing is to make homemade cranberry sauce every year.  Eff that stuff in a can, it's gross!  Was about to give up hope when i did find one little lone carton of cranberries, about the size that they sell raspberries and blueberries in back in the US.  For 800yen (about $9).  So i decided i didn't really want to make cranberry sauce that bad and bought some tasty-looking cassis preserves from France instead for half that price.  Close enough, i figured!  And it was still delicious.

I had ventured to the Ito Yokado the day before to try and find things for a pumpkin cheesecake and green bean casserole.  Pumpkin cheesecake stuff was easy to find (and it turned out quite good, btw!!  Despite the whole melting-the-top-of-the-fridge-to-the-bottom-of-the-toaster-oven mishap..), but for the green bean casserole i just couldn't find cream of mushroom soup or the French fried onions, so i improvised:

Mushroom pottage soup packets, i just added less water than called for to make it the consistency of the condensed cream of mushroom soup.  And Calbee potato snack sticks that i crumbled on top, instead of the French fried onions.  Would've worked out great if i hadn't underestimated my toaster oven, because they got burnt so i had to scrape a bunch off the top.  Boo..

Anyway, on my way back home through the station some guy tried to pick up on me.  That was awkward.  Especially since he did the whole, "鼻がたっけぇッ! (Your nose is high!)" thing.  Meaning the bridge of my nose.  I get that sometimes, and i've heard of many other foreigners getting the same "compliment" too.  It's strange but i guess it's an attractive feature.  Just like having a "small face".  Oh, another favourite description of mine that i've gotten a couple times is that i have "sunflower eyes".  Haha!  Whatever that means.

Yeah, so after that i headed back to my place to get started on the green bean casserole.  S arrived around 7pm with her adorable little Pee Monster of a pup, which i realized i didn't get any pictures of!  D:  Our friend Sho-sho arrived shortly after, then we headed back to the station so S could pick up some ingredients, then we got cooking!

And a lovely feast was had.  With Oldies in the background.

Awesome!

Our delicious spread!

My first helping! Pumpkin dinner roll at top, with cassis preserves, green bean casserole in the middle, S's delicious potatoes, and my imitation meat.  And a nice glass of sangria up top there too. ;)

Sunrise, 6am

We stayed up til nearly 3am playing with the pup, talking to J on Skype, and chatting away while trying to fall asleep, only to get up 2 hours later at 5am to get ready and head on out to Fuji-Q!!  Somehow it took us like 2 hours to get ready though.  Don't know how that happened..

Our initial plan was to take the bus, but we waited til the last minute and then found out we had to make the reservations by phone and the office was already closed for the day, so we ended up just taking the train to Shinjuku station and getting train tickets to Fuji-Q there.  Round-trip it was about 1000-1500yen more than the bus tickets would've cost, but oh well.  We got a nice view of Mt. Fuji on the way there.

Picturesque Fuji!

We got there around 9:30am, shortly after the park opened.  Got our Free Passes (which aren't free, as the name might suggest.  Just gives you free reign of the park, almost) then took forever to decide what to do first!  We finally decided to brave the ええじゃないか (Ee janai ka).  It was about an hour-and-a-half wait, but it was pretty freaking awesome.  S even bought the picture for me that they took of us on the coaster, our faces are amazing, and so is my hair!  Like it exploded.  I screamed the entire time.. actually i think i screamed the entire time on all of the coasters we went on!  

This made me laugh: "FUCK待つ時間" "本当だ!! " ("FUCK waiting time" "For reals!!")  There was lots of graffiti all throughout the queue.. near the front of the line someone had drawn boobs and wrote "さわってください　さわるとすぐ乗れます" (Please touch  If you touch them you will get to ride soon).  S and i both touched them, then a couple minutes later one of the park workers came through the line looking for a group of 2 to go to the front, so those boobs really did work!  If you're ever in line for the Ee janai ka, be sure to touch those boobs.

After the Ee janai ka we decided to get some lunch, since we didn't really have much of a breakfast.  Got a nice HUGE kakiage-don, tempura veggies on top of rice, yummmm.

Being overly stuffed from our huge rice bowls we decided to ride a kiddy ride before going on another intense coaster, to give our food a change to settle so we didn't have to see it again, flying around mid-air on a loop or something.  Our choice of kiddy ride was not the best though.  It was a mini roller coaster that went hella fast with lots of really sharp sudden turns and sudden ups and downs..  i was sitting in the outer seat so whenever we came to a sharp turn i was sure i was going to fly out of the cart, it was horrifying!  We left that ride beaten and bruised (literally!) and with a bit of whiplash.

OMG SO EXCITED for the ride, before we knew what would become of us..

After that we got in line for the Fujiyama coaster, which was my favourite of the day!  Also had the shortest line too, i think we waited less than an hour.  By the time we were done with that one, it was almost 4pm and the park was to be closing at 6pm, so we had a couple more hours to fit in the last two main coasters in the park.  First the ドドンパ (Do-don-pa).. that thing is intense!  You can't tell from the video in that link so much, but when you're first shot out of that tunnel it feels like you're... time travelling or something, it's crazy!  So fast, that after another hour-and-a-half wait, we were on that ride for maybe a minute, lol.

After that, we had time for the last main coaster- 高飛車 (Takabisha).  I think we were dreading this one the most but it ended up being the least scary i think, haha!  It takes you straight up at 90° then has a 121° drop.  Going up was actually the scariest part because you feel like you're going to fall out backwards or the cart is going to fall off the track!  The drop actually wasn't scary, except that when you get to the top it stops you for a second, looking down to the ground below because of the way the track curves in and you can't see it.  And that's when they take your picture on this one!  It was dark out when we were riding this one, so of course my eyes were reflecting the light in the picture, and i had this crazed look on my face so i really looked like some crazy-ass demon.  I wish i had bought that picture, actually.  Pretty priceless.

We had definitely had our thrill fill for the day, and it was pretty cold and the park was finally closing, so we finally headed for the exit, stopping into the gift shop on our way out to get the obligatory souvenirs for our coworkers and such.  I'd definitely like to go back again sometime that's not on a Sunday so we have a couple extra hours to do some more rides.  Next time we won't faff around for an hour trying to figure out what to do first, and we won't make the mistake of wasting our time on that bloody kiddy coaster again either!